Parker Hale M85 Serial Number Checks & Provenance on Manufacture (Records)

[Gil Boyd]

This reply is aimed at those who have an avid interest in the Canadian side of Parker Hale rifles, rather than on PM's for which I apologise, so that the wider community can pick up the same information so it is not lost forever.

If I could firstly state some historical fact:

In 2000, every OFFICIAL record was destroyed and burnt out the back at the Birmingham factory by the Liquidators which is a real crime in itself. The only records that survived were those manually written down in personal books by either Eddie Taff/Bill Smallwood or Paul Burke. These three men were the king pins in Parker Hale and did some wonderous things in their time, and thank God they kept what they did for histories sake, making their little record books the ONLY source of historical and numerical listings kept on individual rifle's history from initial manufacturing.

Canadian C3A1 Rifle

All the C3A1's did in fact come back to Parker Hale and were swiftly renamed M82's, most were sold to the UK market as target rifles. All the actions were definately Santa Barbra and all prefixed by the letter R. So look out for them they are out there.

I can definitively state that a large number of C3A1 rifles came back to Parker Hale on the 2nd November 1993 in particular R23292 and R29813 which are recorded.

Roger Hale decided to conjure up letters preceding or ending the number on each weapon which meant little to those assembling them, and is best described as random, however, the F after the M85 was designated to describe for Military use as FIELD.
The M87 Rifle used a C and the
M84 Rifle used the letter J
It is also recorded by these three ingenious engineers that in 1995 Canada did send back a number of C3A1 rifles for refurb which did get reclassified and sold by Roger Hale as M82's into the public arena.

Sadly these limited historical FACTS which these men luckily recorded and retained as interest for themselves as the "hands on" builders and engineers of these rifles, has now become the only records ever kept after such a sad period of sell offs across the Atlantic and back again by a number of buyers of the Parker Hale brand after 2000 in my view.

The Gun Quarter of Birmingham of course was awash with collapses/sell offs etc in the late 90's and early 2000's. It is therefore not surprising that many records of other famous brands have gone missing or sadly destroyed, as people never seemed to look further than the end of their own noses in terms of historical value to future owners who wanted to know the history of their rifle.

I am passionate about Parker Hale rifles, and continue to search for the Holy Grail, becuase I do believe, some records must still be out there that would in themselves fill in the gaps and provide that vital information.

I work closely with Bill Smallwood daily, and I will eventually record all the Parker Hale information we hold together, and let Doug or this site store them for histories sake to be kept for ever in a Central Database, as we all know our own mortality!!
Hope that helps someone out there, but we continue to update where we can